15/02/2009 (Bangkok Post) - The Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC) planned to allocate a budget of 12 billion baht to help lift the sinking prices of para rubber and oil palm prices, BAAC senior executive vice president Ennoo Suesuwan said on Sunday.

Mr Ennoo said eight billion baht will be used to intervene in the para rubber prices while the remaining 4.5 billion baht will be for oil palm prices.

The plan should be proposed to the BAAC board next week, he added.

According to the plan, the government will distribute the budget to cooperatives and other organisations overseeing para rubber and oil palms, and they will use the money to buy 200,000 tonnes of para rubber before they will be processed and stored until its prices move back up.

At the same time, oil palms will be purchased from farmers by the cooperatives soon and they will be processed into crude oil later.